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Bread

Easy and Sure Way to Make Good Bread

A bread made with boiled potatoes, flour, yeast, lard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Easy and Sure Way to Make Good Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Add enough water to make 3 pints.

  3. Scald 1 pint of flour.

  4. Stir in the mashed potatoes.

  5. Add salt.

  6. Add water to reach a batter-like consistency.

  7. Ensure the mixture is warm enough to hold your hand in.

  8. Add the soaked Yeast Foam.

  9. Keep in a warm place until fermentation ceases, about 10 to 12 hours.

Make the dough

  1. Add 1 quart of hot water to the flour.

  2. Add lard.

  3. Add sugar.

  4. Add ½ teaspoon salt.

  5. Mix in 1 pint of the yeast mixture.

  6. Knead well.

Shape and bake

  1. Place in a warm place to rise.

  2. Knead again when light.

  3. Divide into 4 loaves.

  4. Place in greased pans.

  5. Bake before noon in winter or earlier in summer.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Add moisture and body to the dough, giving a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that form the bread's structure.
Yeast foam
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Lard
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and tenderizes the bread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Keep the sponge warm until fermentation ceases. Yeast activity depends on temperature. Cool conditions slow fermentation, while excessive heat can kill the yeast. Letting the sponge ferment fully develops the flavour and rising power the dough needs.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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